Valentine's Day: Name a roach to show your love

Oh, l’amour! A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and a Madagascar hissing cockroach.

The Bronx Zoo is once again offering a chance to forego flowers and chocolates and instead name a roach in honor of your beloved for Valentine’s Day. Because if there’s a better way to demonstrate your feelings than naming an insect after the object of your affection, it has yet to be discovered. Apparently.

"Roses wither, chocolates melt but roaches are forever,” said John F. Calvelli, the zoo’s executive vice president of public affairs. “Some might say that love is like a roach – elusive, resilient, and sometimes scary.”

Lou Sorkin, an entomologist with Entsult Associates and treasurer with the New York Entomological Society said he has a few — 100 or so — Madagascar hissing roaches, which he said are bigger than the type commonly associated with apartment living.

According to Sorkin, of Rye Brook, they are not considered pests.

“They are kept as pets or used as food for animals,” he said. A hissing cockroach won’t recognize its name or come when it’s called, though “if you’re feeding them they’re going to come over.”

They’re even edible. Sorkin, who has cooked and eaten them, said different breeds of roaches have different flavors.

“They tasted OK,” he said, though not like chicken at all. “They have a scent. Different ones have different odors — the hissing roaches have sort of a pleasant flavor.”

As for their value as a symbol of love, Sorkin said that while hissing cockroach females tend to care for their young longer than other types of roach, they are not what you might call monogamous.

“The adult males try to push the other males away,” fighting for the privilege of mating, Sorkin said, though they then go off to find other females with whom to mate and don’t stick around to help raise the nymphs.

“It’s the same thing with the females,” Sorkin said. “They’re mating with different males.”

All of which is appropriate, according to the Bronx Zoo’s Calvelli.

“Nothing lasts longer than a roach, so it could be sent as a symbolic gesture about how long your love will last or exactly the opposite,” he said.

A $10 donation buys the right to name a roach and a certificate featuring your Valentine roach’s name. For $35, the certificate comes with a plush Madagascar hissing cockroach or a box of gourmet chocolates from artisan chocolatier Nunu Chocolate Company in Brooklyn. Visit www.bronxzoo.com/roach for more information.